If you’ve been reading the To-Do Lists every week, you know that Kathy was away recently.

On one of the flights she started watching ‘The Traitors' - a reality show that, if you’ve watched anything on NBC at all in the past few months you’ve seen promoted endlessly.

She got hooked, and when she came home she subscribed to Peacock for a short time to finish the show.

So I spent four nights on Peacock watching those SNL mini documentaries I mentioned a while back.

I’ve already said my piece about Saturday Night Live (is it driving you nuts that sometimes I italicize shows and sometimes I put them in quotes? There is no John Sucich Stylebook.) in that link above, so I won’t spend too much time on these but I will share some of the thoughts I had watching them.

I guess these all fall under the name SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night - they’re all episodes of that show.

First up was “Five Minutes,” which was basically an hour about the audition process. As I’ve told you, I have seen a lot of SNL over the years, but the cool thing about these mini docs is there was a lot of stuff we’ve never before seen, like dress rehearsal footage, and in this one, audition tapes.

Sometimes you catch a clip here and there of someone’s tape - I’d seen Will Ferrell batting the ball of yarn hundreds of times (maybe it was also in his “Best of” ?) but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen Kate McKinnon’s Penelope Cruz impression. Hilarious.

There were some really beautiful moments in some of these shows. Heidi Gardner’s story about getting the call from Lorne in the cereal aisle was a good one. And I remembered thinking the same thing in the audition doc that I thought while watching that music doc: Joe Piscopo seems just genuinely appreciative of his time on Saturday Night Live and that was nice to see.

(Side note: I’ve never taken Joe Piscopo seriously. He was comic relief on a 1986 Mets video and I thought of him as a goofball and not a legit comic and maybe it’s worth revisiting him?)

Next was “More Cowbell.” My absolutely favorite thing about this one was watching Will Ferrell watching and laughing at his own sketch. (Underrated part of all of these was seeing who enjoyed re-watching their stuff and who didn’t.)

It was fun watching everyone watch the cowbell sketch, but in particular Will Ferrell. I just love that guy.

And man. What a talent. I think that often with some of these guys - they just have this drive and ability that goes beyond what many people are capable of…but Will Ferrell above all is just SO FUNNY.

Anyway, this doc was exactly what you’d think - an hour on one sketch, but it’s great. And another instance where it’s cool to see the dress rehearsal footage and some of the other behind-the-scenes stuff.

“Written By: A Week Inside The SNL Writer’s Room” was also very behind-the-scenes heavy. (Obviously?) There’s a quote from John Mulaney at one point in there where he talks about how the writers whose sketches are chosen for at least dress rehearsal have to work with the set and costume designers. He says, “You’re fully in charge of 3-4 minutes of live network television.”

Very cool to watch how all of that unfolds.

“Season 11: The Weird Year” was good to watch because it’s a blind spot of mine. I knew of Robert Downey, Jr. and Anthony Michael Hall on SNL…but I don’t remember seeing a lot of their episodes. I knew Lorne had been away for five years and come back, but didn’t know about the rebuilding of the cast.

I didn’t even know Damon Wayans had been on SNL until recently. Maybe they didn’t re-run a lot of these shows when I was growing up. But it was amazing to watch what looked like Wayans’ audition tape and see him doing all the characters that became famous on In Living Color.

The thing that made me realize I didn’t watch a lot of these episodes is that set - it’s so 80’s…but I don’t recognize it a ton. And I 100% definitely never saw the Francis Ford Coppola episode.

The best thing to come out of this doc is a heavy dose of Jon Lovitz. I did not realize he was the star of that season.

I’m glad I had the chance to see these. The weird thing about all of them is they felt longer than they were. They didn’t drag, necessarily. Maybe I’m just tired, but as interested as I was in all of them, if I had to get up or pause the show to go do a pick-up or drop-off…I couldn’t believe how little of the hour had passed.

I don’t know if it’s worth getting Peacock just to watch these…but if you’re an SNL fan you’ll probably like them.